There has been an increasing demand for more and more features in portable electronic devices, particularly mobile telephones such as for example, cellular telephones. Generally, the operation of the features are carried out by operating a combination of one or more keys which may be selection keys or alphanumeric keys such as typically found on and used with cellular telephones. One such prior art cellular telephone is shown in FIG. 1 and generally designated 10. The cellular telephone includes a display 12 for displaying text and/or graphics, selection keys 14, 16 for selecting desired operational functionalities of the cellular phone, keypad means generally designated 18 for inputting alphanumeric characters to the phone, a scrolling means generally designated 20 which may be part of the keypad 18 for navigating sub-operational functionalities within a selected operational functionality, and various control keys 22 and 24, for example, to send a call or end a call. The alphanumeric keys 26, 26 may be part of a physical keypad 18 as illustrated or may be part of a virtual keypad, for example a keypad representation on the display screen of the device (not shown) and operated in a well known manner including pen and touch screen operation.
Many of the features included with the portable electronic device such as the cellular telephone are complex and their operation may be menu driven with multiple selection options available through nested sub-menus as illustrated in cascading menu form in FIG. 2 for example. Often, the menu sub-operation selections are not intuitive and cause the user to guess at which operations or key selections should be made to perform the desired operation selection for a given selected desired function.
Further, other features and functions may not be frequently used to enable the user to memorize the necessary sequence of operation steps to carry out the desired selected function much less to become proficient with the operation of the desired feature. Generally, user manuals accompany the portable electronic device to explain the step-by-step operations necessary to carry out the desired function. Obviously, it is inconvenient to carry and time consuming to refer to the user manual each time the user wants to select and operate a feature, particularly an unfamiliar feature or function. It is difficult, even with the user's manual to know with certainty which menu selection step to take in the sequence of steps to carry out or progress in the desired feature or function. Even with practice it takes some time to learn with confidence the steps and possible operational functions available for selection to carry out the desired feature or function.
It would be desirable to provide portable electronic devices such as mobile telephones and particularly cellular telephones that overcome the limitations and deficiencies of the prior art in learning, selecting, and operating desired features and functions of the device.
It would be further desirable if a user of the device could be made aware without guessing of possible operation functions available for selection in a desired chosen function.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a portable electronic device such as a mobile telephone and particularly a cellular telephone with hinting capabilities to make a user aware of next possible operation functions available for selection in a desired chosen function.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a method for use in a portable electronic device such as a mobile telephone and particularly a cellular telephone that serves as a learning tool to assist a user to learn the necessary operation functions in a desired chosen function.